If there was an immortal female with whom I could reintroduce the human race, I would choose the eternal life option

I'd go with eternal life too if that was the case
If that's not the case, I would rather die right now. Being the last human in the universe would be the most depressing existence ever, because we're social beings and we can't live without others.

Living forever sounds great but it's a deep question and more info would have been good.

"The world is filled with lies! Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not commit adultary. These are all lies, deceptions. I don't want to be killed. I don't want to be victim of theft. That is why they use lies like justice and moral to protect their weak selves. The original truth is the survival of the fittest. One must devour it all, wether it be other humans, wealth, power or the world itself! All hail Britannia!" - Charles vi Britannia

Good answer, I've always worried about that. Living forever, when Earth blows up, you'd be suffocating, but by then, hopefully, we have light speed travel, and some kind of cyrostasis chambers to put me to sleep during the 100+ some odd year ride.

You could probably deify yourself if you lived forever, especially if it halted things like aging. If I had to choose between that and dying right this second, I'd go for it.

Unless, over the course of your immortality, you "somehow" gained conclusive evidence that death really isn't so bad after all. That would nag at you for an eternity to come, maddening you with envy and despair ever so slowly...

You could probably deify yourself if you lived forever, especially if it halted things like aging. If I had to choose between that and dying right this second, I'd go for it.

Unless, over the course of your immortality, you "somehow" gained conclusive evidence that death really isn't so bad after all. That would nag at you for an eternity to come, maddening you with envy and despair ever so slowly...

That would be some delicious irony.

"The world is filled with lies! Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not commit adultary. These are all lies, deceptions. I don't want to be killed. I don't want to be victim of theft. That is why they use lies like justice and moral to protect their weak selves. The original truth is the survival of the fittest. One must devour it all, wether it be other humans, wealth, power or the world itself! All hail Britannia!" - Charles vi Britannia

Well with your newly added rules... I would choose live forever. If there is no pain on re-entry and you can't physically burn up, propelling myself through space with my own gas sounds doable. I read that because there is no friction in space (no air - absolute zero) moving even slowly in a direction would never stop - you don't slow down over time because there is nothing too slow you down, nor do you speed up. but you need something to give you that push and what better than a fart.

Space is not without its forces. Why do asteroids fly in massive ovals and not simply fly out of our solar system? Gravity. You can't simply push off of the earth and fly endlessly in one direction. Very likely you'd quickly be caught in the gravity of a sun or planet and get stuck.

On topic:

I think it's easy to have a romantic idea of what it might be like to live forever. I can imagine all the things I might be able to accomplish in that time. But realistically, our minds and bodies are not able to cope with that kind of existence.

1. There is a limit to a human being's ability to process and store information. Time doesn't make people geniuses (otherwise our grandparents would all have PhDs in quantum mechanics) and in fact intelligence tends to degrade with time. Even if we assume that your mental faculties didn't degrade with time in this hypothetical situation, they still wouldn't expand with time either. So without synthetic or genetic alterations, we would not likely be any smarter 200 years from now than we are now. We would inevitably expand our knowledge of different areas, but we'd also forget many things we knew along the way.

2. Humans need constant interaction and entertainment. This is a product of our limited lifespans and of our community-based environments. Unfortunately, a consequence of this is that we get bored easily. If we experience the same thing too often, we lose interest in it. If we see a problem occurring too often, we get frustrated with it. If we lack entertainment for too long a period of time (even an hour or two) we become extremely antsy and restless. Try to imagine spending a day floating out in space with nothing in view (pitch black) -- just 24 hours. Could your mind handle that? Now imagine it lasts 1000 years... or 20 billion. You'd go insane. In fact, under many scenarios where you live indefinitely, you'd end up going insane unless your mind somehow adjusted to the extreme boredom and loneliness that you'd inevitably experience in that time.

3. Humans are social creatures. As a product of our evolution, we need other people in order to survive. Not only is this true in a hunter-gatherer sense, but it has also caused humans to develop the need to be close to other people emotionally. People who lack emotional contact with others tend to be depressed. Many extreme cases result in suicide. Can you imagine being severely depressed for hundreds of thousands of years and having no way to end that depression. I think depression is an inevitability for a person that lives forever -- that is hell. That's worse than any kind of physical torture you can devise. It would be as bad as a feeling of suffocating (from lack of oxygen) for all eternity.

I don't really understand what's the purpose of the choice here? Also if you live forever you most likely won't be flowing in space as humanity will create the needed technology - it's one of those things that are guaranteed to happen, but take longer than Blizzard's trademarked "soon".

Idk maybe every1 you love dies, no point finding new ones to love, cos those will die out too, and you're the only one of "your kind"... i'd feel lonely..

On the other hand, you might get used to seeing people come and go in your life after a few 100 years.

"The world is filled with lies! Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not commit adultary. These are all lies, deceptions. I don't want to be killed. I don't want to be victim of theft. That is why they use lies like justice and moral to protect their weak selves. The original truth is the survival of the fittest. One must devour it all, wether it be other humans, wealth, power or the world itself! All hail Britannia!" - Charles vi Britannia

Impossible to live forever unless you can save the Universe from Collapsing in billions of years from now

---------- Post added 2012-02-18 at 08:07 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Finnald

Live forever.
Logic behind it; after about 1000 years, years and months would fly by like seconds if my mind continues to degrade at the steady human rate of elderly age decline. However if my mental capacity no longer decays, I would strongly reconsider this and have to reweigh my options. x]

Within 500 years Bionics/Mind uploading would enhance your well being and in todays standards you would be considered a God.